BURSTA nonpartisan watchdog group, which previously told The Hill it was against blue states doing mid-decade redistricting in response to a battle playing out in Texas, is now signaling some openness to the tactic.
Common Cause said in a statement Tuesday it would not “endorse partisan gerrymandering even when its motive is to offset more extreme gerrymandering by a different party,” but it also added that “a blanket condemnation in this moment would amount to a call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian efforts to undermine fair representation and people-powered democracy.”
The group said it was establishing standards by which it could be assessing states’ maps, including proportionality, public participation, racial equity and federal reform, among other aspects.
“We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy,” Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said in a statement. “But neither will we call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian tactics that undermine fair representation.”
“We have established a fairness criteria that we will use to evaluate all countermeasures so we can respond to the most urgent threats to fair representation while holding all actors to the same principled standard: people—not parties—first,” she added.
The announcement represents a shift for the group. Dan Vicuna, director of voting and fair representation at Common Cause, told The Hill last month of blue states engaging in redrawing their maps in the middle of the decade: “This is dead wrong from a democracy perspective.”
“I think it’s very problematic for Democrats from a political strategic perspective,” he added at the time.
Common Cause noted Tuesday it was still key a supporter of independent redistricting commissions and reminded readers of its history in battling for fairer representation.
“We took Common Cause v. Rucho to the Supreme Court, which refused to curb partisan gerrymandering. We helped craft the Freedom to Vote Act to ban partisan gerrymandering, but Congress did not pass it,” the group said. “We have championed independent redistricting commissions nationwide, yet neither party has embraced them fully. We are here because the courts, Congress, and political leaders failed to act.”
Yet, Common Cause’s signaling openness to allowing states to conduct mid-decade redistricting in response to Texas underscores how the larger redistricting battle has created fissures in democracy-focused and civil rights groups who have long opposed some of the same tactics Democrats are using to blunt Texas’ potential gains with their proposed House map.
Common Cause California was intimately involved in the creation of California’s independent commission, though California Democrats are now trying to work around the commission to pass maps mid-decade.
The watchdog’s remarks strike a similar tone to Democrats who have argued that not responding to Texas Republicans’ efforts to redraw their maps would be unilateral disarmament and that they need to fight fire with fire.